fcc – Page 7 – Engineering Radio

FCC authority to conduct warrentless searches of Private Property

I was this interesting tidbit on the Radio World website the other day. The question is, how much authority does the FCC have to conduct a search of a private residence? The Electronic Frontier Foundation wanted to know therefore they sent a FOIA request to the FCC seeking documents supporting this claimed authority.

The documents received seem to be redacted and some are mostly blank, such as the training module on how to obtain permission to enter private property is supposed to take 6 hours to complete, but consists of 3 paragraphs and 2 questions. Hopefully, that is redacted and does not reflect on the quality of agents the FCC is employing these days. The upshot seems to be the agent either needs a warrant or permission.

It may be surprising to some citizens, however, the FCC does have the authority to investigate radio signals, whether they are intentionally generated, as in a pirate broadcaster, or unintentionally generated, as in a piece of gear gone bad.

According to federal regulations, an FCC agent may request entry to inspect a private building anytime he/she believes there may be a device emitting radio frequency energy. This includes anything with an FCC part 15 sticker, which can be computers, TV remote controls, garage door openers, WiFi network routers, etc. This basically covers every house in the US as well as most businesses. Those rules were written when most homes and businesses did not have any RF generating devices and there was little to indicate that they ever would.

The consequence of failure to allow an FCC field agent into a residence or business appears to be the issuance of a citation in the form of a threatening letter. Continued intransigence would be met with a NAL (Notice of Apparent Liability) followed by a forfeiture notice also known as a fine. The typical FCC fine these days seems to be $10,000.00. If it is a repeated and willful violation, the equipment can be ceased and the perpetrator arrested.

In instances where the safety of life is in question, then every step necessary to disable the offending device needs to be taken. Things like transmitters spurring into aircraft frequencies or TV antenna amplifiers running wide open, also interfering with aircraft frequencies come to mind.

One of the examples given details a field agent trying to track down a noisy cable TV amplifier. From the FCC field agent’s perspective, the homeowner appears to be a royal pain in the ass. In this day and age when everything has a computer and most of them generate RF, tracking down interference can be a painstaking process, especially where housing is dense. Uncooperative homeowners, especially dumb ones, who have no idea what they have plugged in only make things worse.

Still, there is the issue of fourth amendment rights, which, if the above law was misinterpreted, misused, or applied with the wrong standard would likely be trampled. In these days of extra-constitutional activity, giving Los Federales entry into one’s house might invite unwanted scrutiny by other agencies. As far as changing the rules, with the current group of scoundrels and rouges in the legislative branch, one might end up with something ten times worse than before.

Why “New Media” is no replacement for “Old Media.”

The DC circuit court struck a stinging blow to any thoughts about so-called “Net Neutrality” when it overturned the FCC’s attempts to force Comcast the abide by its rules regarding internet access. The three-judge panel ruled that the FCC does not have the authority to force Internet Service Providers (ISP) to give equal access to all its customers. In a nutshell, this means that companies like Comcast, ATT, and Verizon, can filter search engine results and traffic, baning websites for no specific reasons.

So much for net neutrality. Say I type something here that is critical of one of those companies, or any ISP for that matter. With a few keystrokes, my site will disappear. Gone. Just like that. For those that think the internet is this wonderful open global village thing that can spread the word and as a sort of modern-day check and balance system, think again. In this day and age, when corporations have the same rights as people, look for the large ISPs to spend significant lobbying dollars to keep the laws tilted in their favor. I would expect to also see quite a few campaign contributions to legislators that are friendly to large corporations.

There are several letter-writing campaigns, urging the FCC to change its classification of ISPs to a common carrier status, something that would put the ISPs squarely under the FCC’s control. I look upon those with a jaundiced eye. Perhaps the FCC can be convinced to change the rules, this time. What will happen when a new FCC gets appointed? Will those changes stay in effect? The cynical side of me says no.

Independently run media outlets have traditionally acted as a backstop in our society. There are fewer and fewer of those left these days. I will readily acknowledge that the current crop of radio station owners, with some minor exceptions, have left the industry in shambles. Their decision to place profit above all considerations, in spite of the license being granted in the public trust, has decimated newsrooms, reduced staffing, and relegated community involvement to a minor paperwork shuffle at license renewal time. All of this and more have conspired to make radio dull and uninformative. Bland canned formats created and programmed thousands of miles away have ruined local radio flavor. No wonder why people spend money to download from Itunes.

Yet, radio listenership is still high. Radio’s saving grace is it is nearly universal, everyone has a radio, and most households have four or five radios. The technology is time-tested and it works well. Almost every square mile of the US is covered by broadcast radio signals. Some areas are sparse, but there are at least one or two stations that come in. People are used to radio, there is no learning curve, no subscriber fees, and no censorship from a huge faceless mega-corporation. Well, that last part is in theory, anyway. It is almost too much of a coincidence that mega-corporations also own the majority of radio stations too.

Television as a medium is almost gone. Very few people actually watch over-the-air TV, most people get their TV piped into their house via cable. Once again, as those in the NY metropolitan area know, there is no guarantee that the local cable operator will carry a broadcast station, vis a vis the WABC-7 Cablevision dispute from last month.

Newspapers are struggling to stay afloat, even the once mighty New York Times has seen better days.

That leaves us with Radio to fill in the role of un-censored informer. Can they? Will they? It would be a radical departure from the current course and only time will tell.

Money quote of the day

From here:

Unlike some attorneys, engineers know that the laws of physics are not subject to negotiation.

Music, pure music.

S.2881 – FCC Commissioners’ Technical Resource Enhancement Act

The House version of this bill is HR 4809. It seems that in this day and age, as the country is becoming more and more technologically advanced, the communications regulation arm of the federal government is feeling a little left behind. This is a fairly common thing these days, companies are run by accountants and lawyers while the engineers and technologists that actually do whatever technical thing the organization is supposed to be doing are “those funny guys in the basement” or corner or wherever. The bill reads as such:

Section 4(f)(2) of the Communications Act of 1934 (47 U.S.C. 154(f)(2)) is amended by inserting after the first sentence the following new sentence: ‘Each commissioner may also appoint an electrical engineer or computer scientist to provide the commissioner technical consultation when appropriate and to interface with the Office of Engineering and Technology, Commission Bureaus, and other technical staff of the Commission for additional technical input and resources, provided that such engineer or scientist holds an undergraduate or graduate degree from an institution of higher education in their respective field of expertise.’.

That would be a step in the right direction. Hopefully said engineer has several years of experience also, field experience would be even better. As a radio engineer, I learned that theory is great and most of the time everything goes together exactly as it is supposed to. There are those occasions, however, where theory has to be thrown out and a prove-fail/prove-pass approach needs to be taken.

In any case, the bill appears to be on the fast track and hopefully, the FCC commissioners will choose and use their staff engineers wisely.